Method 2: reset keychain password with command line in single user mode. if you cannot work with keychain access because of something like messages agent constantly asking for the forgotten login keychain password, you can use command line to reset keychain password in single user mode. 1.. Open keychain access, which is in the utilities folder of your applications folder. choose preferences from the keychain access menu, then click the reset my default keychain button in the preferences window. after you enter your new password, keychain access creates an empty login keychain with no password. click ok to confirm.. Acknowledgements. just a cleaned-up version of directions from mac script to change administrator password. changing a user password via terminal command. if you ever want to—perhaps for scripting purposes?—change a user's password from the command-line (despite what it says in the link above, you don't have to be logged in as the user to change the user's password, but you do have to be.
For the login password, it's via sudo... sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -passwd /users/admin oldpwd newpwd. for the keychain password — because that's encrypted data and not a hash record that can be "whacked" to a new value — you have to know the old keychain password to change it.. This document describes how to use the mac os x keychain to store and retrieve passwords or other secrets from the command-line. this may be a reasonable solution for you to manage per-user secrets on your laptop or desktop, for example.. The idea of being able to get a password from command line is super useful, especially when it comes to retrieving a password for a website. if i don't recall a password but know that mac os' keychain has it, i need to open my browser, go to the desired website, use the developer tools to change the input type from password to text , a process.
